Alamance County courts will fully reopen, effective immediately, Alamance County’s two top judges have decided, based on a directive from N.C. Supreme Court chief justice Paul Newby.
Senior resident superior court judge D. Thomas Lambeth, Jr. and chief district court judge Bradley Reid Allen, Sr. made the decision in an order issued today. Lambeth also sent out a letter summarizing the decision.
Gone, effective immediately, are the medical screenings which had been necessary to enter all court facilities as well as the use of the Paramount Theater in Burlington for some civil jury trials.
“We will be removing the mask mandate in our courthouses, but we encourage individuals to make their own personal decision whether to continue wearing a mask,” Lambeth says in his letter.
Lambeth also says that some procedural changes, initially implemented due to the Covid pandemic, will be continued: “time slots in District Criminal Court and scheduled motions hearing times in Superior Civil Court and we will continue to utilize remote hearings where appropriate.”
Chief justice Newby’s Thursday proclamation, on which Lambeth and Allen based their revisions, had advised “all judicial officials to resume immediately full courthouse operations and administer justice without further delay as mandated by the North Carolina Constitution.”
